Tallis Scholars Summer School Sydney 2008

Announcement and discussion of activities such as musical workshops, concerts/performances, music competitions etc.
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soundog
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Joined: 22 Feb 2006 03:50

Tallis Scholars Summer School Sydney 2008

Post by soundog »

To anyone who is interested, the tallis scholars are running a summer school in Sydney between Jan 20th and Jan 26th 2008. The venue will be St Johns College which is within the University of Sydney. Tutors will be Peter, Jan Coxwell and Deborah Roberts. The school is being handled by Musica Viva and the music has yet to be chosen.

see : http://www.peterphillips.info/projects-tsss.html
pml
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Post by pml »

I sent in my application this afternoon :-)

Regards, Philip
soundog
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Joined: 22 Feb 2006 03:50

Post by soundog »

Great to hear Phillip !

I went on this years school and it was absolutely fantastic. Lots of singing and what I would call "choral training" - drumming in rhythm and reading skills. The standard was very high and as I can't sight read, I would have been the weakest one there. Despite that I fumbled through it all with the help of some very helpful people around me and by the end of the week, my sight singing had improved dramatically.

What I learnt was invaluable. In just 3 minutes of speaking to Andrew Carwood, I sorted out a major technical problem I had been struggling with for years. However, my favourite activity for the whole week was the compline sessions in the evening. Getting right into the heart and soul of the music in the late evening was magical.
vaarky
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Re: Tallis Scholars Summer School Sydney 2008

Post by vaarky »

I've heard from someone who attended the Tallis Scholars workshop in the U.S. multiple times and found it valuable. I'm curious about it myself and may try to go at some point (I've been to the Chanticleer one). Anyone been to both and can compare?

Can you say more about what the technical problem was and what the solution turned out to be?
soundog
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Joined: 22 Feb 2006 03:50

Re: Tallis Scholars Summer School Sydney 2008

Post by soundog »

I can't compare with Chanticleer's workshops as I've never been to the USA.

The problem I had was with the passagio from chest voice to head voice - especially with the "e" vowel. I'm largely self taught but on occasions, had approached a couple of singing teachers to help me out with it. Unfortunately, nobody was able to tell me in technical terms how to smooth that transition. From listening to a lot of recordings, all I could hear was a wonderfully smooth transition from full chest register into the beautiful soft lyric tenor sound that was proving so elusive. Despite being a baritone, I could yell up to the E above high C, but I couldn't sing it softly.

I got Andrew to sing through the passaggio around E and noticed that the gear change was quite noticeable at 3 feet away, but could not be picked up by a microphone 20 feet away. The first revelation was that transitions are not as smooth as recordings indicate which gave me a more realistic target to work towards and an appreciation of the difficulties in negotiating passaggios.

The second revelation was to do with nomenclature and the definition and sound of "head voice" - which I didn't have at all. I thought that the head voice everybody referred to was falsetto. It isn't apparently. I had never found a technical definition of head voice in any texts - even by Miller - probably because it is taken for granted by most singers and teachers, but when one is self taught, such revelations are like gold.

After hearing head voice close up for myself I realised what it was and was able to then figure out a way to produce that sound giving me a much better tenor sound and a greater range so that I could record all the higher tenor parts with a much more convincing result. Sadly, having discovered it, I don't think that I could give now a technical definition of head voice in worlds myself....
vaarky
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Re: Tallis Scholars Summer School Sydney 2008

Post by vaarky »

Very helpful--thanks for posting about it. Personally, my transition from chest voice to head voice is like a teenager learning to drive a jerky stick shift car. I've tried to sidestep the issue by working my head voice as far down and as far up as I can (a good number of octaves), and head voice happens to work well for the type of singing I prefer to concentrate on. The side effect is that I haven't learned how to sing chest voice without making my voice ragged after a short time, so covering a different voice part trashes my voice for the day.

By the way, this sounds like one of those things where it would be great if someone could post a video and put keywords that make it easily findable via search engines.
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